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I'll come right out and say it: I like the addon Healers Have To Die. This addon looks through your combat log to see who's casting healing spells around you; if it detects that a player has cast a healing spell, it puts a big red cross over their nameplate. Friend or foe, it doesn't matter. There's also a mouseover function that will sound a chime when the nameplates aren't visible, though I confess I don't play with the sound up loud enough to hear it.
In a chaotic place like Tol Barad, Isle of Conquest, or Alterac Valley, this kind of information is a godsend – my screen gets very cluttered, I have trouble seeing who is doing what, and I rely upon nameplates to convey information. HHTD marks those folks who cast healing spells – not healers, that's an important distinction – and marks them so you can target them easily. In a courtyard scrum or pitched fight in a keep, HHTD makes finding the healers easy, and killing them easy, too.
Healers Have To Die is also one of the most hated addons in the game right now, with people on the forums regularly calling for it to be banned or broken by Blizzard, at the same time people are encouraging its use in Tol Barad. It is a hard time to be a dedicated battleground healer because of HHTD, with opponents focusing on you relentlessly. If you're sitting behind a group of your teammates, healing away, you may find ranged fire focusing on you. Melee will cut through the crowd to get at you. Stuns, interrupts, CC – all are directed your way, and in some part because of the spread of HHTD. It doesn't feel fair, and it certainly doesn't make BGs very much fun.
So here we have a UI addon – just like Gearscore, or DBM, or Recount – which changes how World of Warcraft plays for people. It has limits, but it's also an incredibly powerful tool when enough people run it.
It's also a litmus test for how you feel about addons in general, though you may not know it yet.
Addons take information that is already available to players and display it in a different, hopefully more useful, manner. Recount and Skada parse through your damage logs to give an accurate measurement of how your character performed. Deadly Boss Mods looks for boss emotes, buffs, and debuffs to track events in dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds. Gladius helps Arena players answer tricky questions like: is their trinket still up? (Always assume yes, until you see them blow it.)
None of them do anything that you couldn't, theoretically, do yourself. Recount would be extremely difficult to do in real time, mind you, but you could manually parse the logs afterwards if you really wanted to. DBM shouts out warnings that aren't necessary if you're paying attention to cues within the encounter. Are you in fire? Don't stand in it. Boss yells about something or other? Get ready to move.
Addons which confer knowledge also confer power. You don't need these addons to play well – you honestly don't. But by increasing your awareness of what's going on around you, of parsing information and giving you only the important things you need to know, addons can help you play better.
And that gets to the crux of the first complaint about HHTD: that it makes targeting healers too easy.
You know how I used to identify healers in a battleground before HHTD came out? Easy.
Look at the opposing team's roster at the beginning of play. Check in periodically. See those folks leading the healing column, without a lot of damage done? They are the healers, memorize their names, they have to die. This is the most straightforward way to identify who the healers are in any situation – see who is healing!
What about when there isn't a scoreboard?
Hey, those people standing in the back? Wearing cloth or leather, casting spells with green or yellow sparkly bits? The ones who aren't shooting out black beams or fireballs or lightning bolts?
They're probably healers. They probably have to die first before anyone else on the other side dies, so kill them.
What about when things get crowded and you can't see what's going on?
There are only four classes in Warcraft who can be healers, and their healing specs all have highly distinctive visual effects.
- Druid hanging out in caster form? Not in cat or moonkin form? Uses travel form a lot? They're a healer.
- Priest not in shadowform? Healer.
- Shaman not running after people to smash their faces in, and not casting big bolts of lighting? They're a healer, too.
- Paladin not running after people to smash their faces in? Maybe wearing a dress? Healer.
Members of these classes are highly visible, and any addon that lets you see classes can get you almost all the way to the functionality of HHTD. If they show cast bars (which they should), you can see the spells their casting and be absolutely certain they're a healer or not.
These methods are all tried, true, and mostly independent of anything other that situational awareness. The information is all out there, and is accessible in ways that any player can learn to detect.
But Healers Have To Die takes all of that information and boils it down to one thing: a big red cross over a healer's nameplate.
Is using addons the mark of a bad player?
This is a serious question. You see this charge thrown around in various forms on the forums, on blog posts, on twitter, usually with more vitriol than I care to repeat. Sometimes it's about using a specific addon, sometimes it's about using addons entirely; but when people start making the charge that only baddies use a specific addon, I take notice, because underneath the ad hominen attack, the underlying argument is fascinating.
"Only baddies use Addon X" breaks down to the following logical form.
- This game has tasks with a set difficulty.
- Addon X reduces the difficulty of performing these tasks by some amount.
- Player A is able to complete the tasks without Addon X, thereby completing tasks at their normal level of difficulty.
- Player B is able to complete the tasks with Addon X, thereby completing tasks an an easier level of difficulty.
- Because Player A exhibited more skill in performing the task than Player B, Player A is more skilled than Player B.
The final statement is incorrect for two reasons, of course. First, Player B may be more skilled at performing this task at the normal level of difficulty than Player A, which would be masked by the different standards each player was asked to perform at. Second, attributing overall competence based upon performance of a single task gets tricky.
And then there's the unavoidable fact that this is an ad hominen argument – the personal attack upon Player B (and by extension, all users of the addon) has no relevance upon whether players should or should not use it. It's a logical fallacy, a red herring to distract you from considering what's being said. It's not about the skills of Player A or Player B, it's about the only truth within the entire statement:
Addon X makes the task easier to complete.
That's it. Ignore all the name calling, take away considerations of the community of users, and you have that simple truth. Addon X makes it easier to do the job.
You have a tool that makes a task easier. You can either:
- Use the tool and complete the task with less effort, time, or error than without the tool, or,
- Forego using the tool, complete the task without it, and have the satisfaction of having done more with less.
Neither option is inherently right. There can be value in using a manual screwdriver over a powered one; perhaps you need very fine control, or you're learning how to use a screwdriver in the first place. But that doesn't mean that the powered screwdriver doesn't have value, either – just ask someone putting together furniture with many, many screws to tighten!
In some cases, choosing to use addons feels like the choice between manual or automatic transmissions in a car. There's more to keep track of with a stick shift, but you have a lot of control over the vehicle, you're always aware of how the engine is performing, and the slight inconvenience of having to shift becomes automatic. At least, until you have to spend several hours in stop-and-go traffic, where having an automatic transmission is invaluable.
In other cases, choosing to use an addon can feel like it's reading the Cliff's Notes version of a book instead of the book itself; hindering learning by just giving you the knowledge you need to pass the test, without imparting deep understanding of the subject. I honestly think there's something to be said for learning to play a class with fewer macros and addons than you use at the end game, just so that you understand the subtleties of your abilities better.
But I also think that once you know what you're doing, automating actions, making your workflow more efficient, running a lot of addons – optimizing your UI is actually the mark of a good player, not a bad one.
Yes, you can argue that using addons is the mark of a bad player, because it reduces the difficulty of the tasks you're asked to perform, therefore allowing players with lower overall skillsets to accomplish more than the default program would allow. Running without addons is a great way to learn the intricacies of your character.
You can also argue that not using addons is the mark of a bad player, because they are refusing to use tools which would reduce that difficulty, therefore choosing to play a harder game.
The counterargument to "only baddies use Addon X" is "only baddies don't use Addon X," which , in the case of some popular PvE addons, you see a lot of. A good threat meter and a boss tracker are practically requirements for endgame raiding.
Like I said: I find this argument fascinating when it comes up.
Due to the nature of the environments, there's a big disconnect between PvE and PvP addons. PvE addons are reducing the difficulty of a static task with no dependencies on other humans; there may be random elements in the encounter, but by in large PvE is static. The utility of an addon is measured in relation to a static environment.
The effectiveness of PvP addons is always measured in relation to the opponent, and, by extension, the addons that they may be running, too. Magmaw doesn't get to run DXE to tell him when to interrupt your healing spells, but Ipwnyou-Arthas can run as many mods as he likes to gain an advantage. Addons confer advantages in combat that stack with your natural skill; you can choose to not pursue those advantages, but other players will likely not, and you've made winning harder for yourself as a result.
I think the behavior of the top raiders and gladiators helps illustrate this point.
- Take a look at a world first boss kill, or any hardcore raiding video. How many are running stock UI, no Omen, no raid frames, no CD tracker? I would wager you can't find a single one that doesn't use addons.
- Watch tournament Arena games. How many are running modified UIs? None, because they're not allowed. Stock UIs and macros are all you get, and it's to keep the playing field level.
On the one hand, you have top players using addons to make progression raiding easier. I don't think this is limited to world-first guilds, by the way – most raiding guilds I've encountered have requested UI screenshots to validate that you're running certain addons. This is part of a hardcore raiding philosophy – you do whatever you can to make downing a boss easier. Addons make the game easier. It's a simple truth, and it doesn't have a thing to do with being a good or bad player. By presenting the right information to the player, addons can make anyone play better, both in PvE and PvP.
The lack of addons in tournament PvP play sheds light into the nature of addons. Addons are inherently unbalancing – they augment player's skills, and in PvP, that means that when all else is equal, addons can tip the balance. Getting the right information at the right time and making the right decision off of it can lead to clutch plays – that's why people use Gladius in Arenas to consolidate information about their enemy's status. Tournaments ban them precisely because they are unbalancing, and at that level, the matches are truly supposed to be about skill versus skill.
But outside of tournaments, addons are prevalent and extremely useful.
Addons in PvP are an arms race. If you don't have them, your opponent almost certainly will. Just like gear is likely to not be equal in any given battleground, there is no standard interface people are required to run in normal PvP, and I'm a big advocate of pursuing every single advantage possible.
The spread of Healers Have To Die has been part of that arms race, and an interesting one at that. In places like Tol Barad, the more people on a side who had the addon, the more efficiently they could eliminate opposing healers, which often led to victory. But, word certainly has gotten out, and now there's a more equal distribution curve between factions, which negates the early adoption advantage – but it doesn't nullify the effects upon healers, which is that they are dying more rapidly now than before.
I'm not arguing that you should download a crapload of addons from Curse and that running them will make you a better PvPer. Picking the right tool for the job is essential if it is to improve your play.
But not running with an game-changing addon like Healers Have To Die in today's PvP environment is deliberately crippling your own play. It's totally fine if you don't do it – but you can probably find healers faster with it than without it. You're probably going to be more effective in battlegrounds if you plug it in.
Choosing to bring a knife to a gun fight is always a viable option. You're just better off bringing a gun with a scope.
We'll just start off with this: all healers are your friends.
I do not care if he is from a different server and has a silly name, he is your friend. Bad people are going to try to hurt your friend.
Save him and he will reward you by making you immortal.
Do not ever abandon your friend to the rogues.
– Dusk's How To BG
The problem with Healers Have To Die is actually very simple: healers are dying more than they used to. Now that a critical mass of players have downloaded the addon, healers are finding themselves focus-fired in battlegrounds where they formerly were assured relative safety in the crowd. No more – now healers are finding themselves huge targets on the battleground, unable to do their jobs while getting cut down by ranged fire and charging melee.
My first battleground healer was a druid. I went into lowbie battlegrounds and had a blast running around, healing from caster form, hotting everything I could reach. People didn't bother me, apparently not suspecting that the night elf running around behind the lines, waving her hands with green swirly marks might be, you know… healing?
But it all changed when I got Tree of Life form. Shifting into ToL meant I became an instant target, and BG healing became a lot less fun. A tree is a highly visible target, one that I reflexively sought out on my Warlock, and being on the receiving end of that focus was absolutely miserable. No one helped defend me. Two rogues climbing all over me? You better believe teammates would run past me.
I mean, did my flailing branches look like they'd be super effective at swatting the rogues away from me? Did my running around spamming glyphed Healing Touch on myself inspire confidence that I had this under control?
Being targeted as a healer sucks. Being targeted as a healer without peels or support of any kind sucks even more.
And there's the one real problem with Healers Have To Die – it makes it easier to spot and kill a healer, without the corresponding balance in healer survival. There is no corresponding Healers Have To Live addon which alerts you to healers on your side, those folks who need protection, who you need to be watching out for at all times.
Except… wait. Healers Have To Die also picks up the healers on your team and marks them. Healers Have To Die has the functionality we'd want out of Healers Have To Live, only it is not having the effect you'd expect. It could be used to protect your own healers… but it isn't. Why is this?
Some of this is due to interface limitations. Much of the time, DPS run with Enemy nameplates on, not Friendly nameplates on, just to reduce screen clutter. So the information that there are healers on your side may not even be communicated.
But I also think that the UI is only part of it; I think it's just hard to realize that someone needs help in a battleground. There is so much shit going on when taking a base in Tol Barad, I barely know who is targeting me, let alone how to help the healers that I don't know about running beside me.
There's the real problem. Unlike in Arenas, where I'm watching the status of my healer(s) very closely, in a random pug BG, chances are I don't know you're a healer until you do something to let me know. If you talk about it in /bg, if you are on the scoreboard with a lot of healing, if I actively see what you're doing – then heck yes, I can defend you as a DPS.
One of my favorite addons for PvP is a simple mod called SaySapped. When a rogue saps you, you say "Sapped" to alert your teammates. You can modify the files to yell it, or say something different – but it is extremely effective because it communicates your problem to people who can directly help. I know what the sapped visual looks like in other players, and I watch out for it when guarding flags and towers – but actively, automatically communicating that information to people who might not know, or might not spot it is hugely valuable. People dismount, spam AoE, and find the rogue when that addon fires off. It's awesome.
SaySapped helps illustrate the problem of making Healers Have To Live a reality. HHTD is personal information, only available to the player running the addon. Spotting a healer is something that can be done without the addon, players are learning that the healers have to die first, and there's nothing stopping people from running a macro that says:
/bg %t is a healer, they have to die first!
(Interestingly, HHTD does not do this yet, though it's a logical extension of the mod.)
I don't actually see that level of communication in most pug BGs, but it's a good macro to have in your toolkit, because it transforms the personal information of HHTD into intelligence the rest of your team can use.
SaySapped conveys this intelligence automatically to the people around you who are best suited to help you. This is what's lacking in HHTD/L – actually conveying the information the mod picks up and making it information everyone can use. (I think this is actually a good thing, since you want to be selective about which healers you're targeting. Not everyone who casts a healing spell in a BG is a healer.)
If I were to offer any advice on how to make Healers Have To Live a reality, it's that healers need to be more proactive in battlegrounds about letting people know they need protection. The way to counter HHTD is not more nameplate mods, but rather a good macro:
/y I'm a healer, and I'm under attack by %t! Please help!
Bind that macro to a key, and when you get into trouble, hit it. Put a healing pot on it as well, or a free action potion, or Barkskin, or other defensive CDs – but take the initiative to secure your own safety and get assistance from your teammates.
And if you're not playing a healer? Simple.
/bg %t is a healer and needs help!
They have to know you're a healer in order to know that you have to live.
I'll come right out and say that I hope Blizzard doesn't ban HHTD. It sets a bad precedence for addons that provide any kind of information in PvP. Gladius tells me if someone has their PvP trinket up or not. SaySapped tells my teammates that I've been sapped, reducing the effectiveness of Rogues. Vuhdo and Healbot help me heal my teammates faster than I can do with mouseover macros – Vuhdo even tells me what direction people are in!
The real complaint against HHTD is not the addon, but that there's no corresponding defense against it in PvP. It doesn't share information positioning information like AVR did, or even exchange information like SaySapped does. It makes finding healers easy. And people are using that to kill enemy healers while not protecting their friendly healers, and that's the crux of people's complaints. Banning HHTD doesn't address this fundamental problem, which extends far beyond the scope of a single addon.
What we need here is more aggressive identification of healers on your own team, not less. If you're a healer, speak up. If you're not a healer, find the healers and call them out to your teammates. Calling out healers should become your second priority in battlegrounds, right behind calling out incomings.
If you feel nervous about putting yourself forward as a healer, don't. Your team needs you. Your team needs you alive, they have to know you are there to protect you. It's better to be vocal and win than to be dead and lose.
If you feel nervous about calling out healers in your battlegrounds, remember: healers are your friends. Do not abandon them to the rogues.
Watch out for each other out there.
Update September 16, 2011: I've written a followup post on using HHTD to protect friendly healers that continues the discussion in this post. You may find it useful.


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After much deliberation, I have decided to merge this blog with my "regular" website at www.amyjohnsoncrow.com. In the very near future, this blog will automatically redirect there. Don't worry — all your favorite olds posts will still be accessible. You'll still be able to read about my seriously cool Route 66 bag as well as why I don't care where you put the comma.
If you haven't already, please go to the new site and update your RSS feed. (The link will be on the right.) And feel free to tell a friend!

subset: commoncrawl


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Title :
Series :
The Original Series
Rating :
Overall Ep :
First Aired :
10 Nov 1967
Stardate :
Director :
Ralph Senensky
Year :
Writers :
Gene L. Coon
Season Ep :
x 02
Main Cast :
James Doohan
Montgomery Scott
DeForest Kelley
Leonard H. McCoy
Walter Koenig
Pavel A. Chekov
Nichelle Nichols
Nyota Uhura
Leonard Nimoy
William Shatner
James T. Kirk
George Takei
Hikaru Sulu
Guest Cast :
Majel Barrett
as Voice of the Companion
Glenn Corbett
Zefram Cochrane
Elinor Donahue
Commissioner Nancy Hedford
Eddie Paskey
Lieutenant Leslie
Elizabeth Rogers
as Companion's voice
Kirk says he will not reveal Cochrane's existence. So what's he going to do about Hedford? She's an important woman, and she's vanished without trace. Even if McCoy fakes up a death certificate, wouldn't the absence of a body be somewhat hard to explain?
Great Moment :
Kirk's enticing Cochrane to help him by describing the wonders of the galaxy is my favourite scene of this one.
Body Count :
Zero; Hedford could be considered to have died, since there seems to be nothing left of her mind once the Companion takes up residence.
Factoid :
Zefram Cochrane will re-appear in the film "Star Trek: First Contact".
This episode provides the only canonical desciption of the workings of the universal translator.
Though it would happen several times afterwards, this is the first episode in which Captain Kirk is not aboard the Enterprise at any point.
When in Human form, the Companion looks at Cochrane through Hedford's scarf, which is the same colour pattern as the Companion energy cloud, as if wanting to see him once more as she used to. The moment is unscripted, and was thought of on set whilst shooting when it was noticed that the scarf in question coincidentally matched the Companion special effect.
Kirk, Spock and McCoy are transporting Federation Commissioner Hedford to the Enterprise aboard a shuttlecraft. Hedford, a career diplomat, had contracted Sakuro's disease and is going to the ship for treatment, and for transport to Epsilon Canaris III where she will take part in some delicate negotiations.
However, the shuttle encounters a strange glowing cloud of energy and becomes disabled. It crashes on the nearby Gamma Canaris N, a planet which can support life but is uninhabited. They try to contact the ship but find that their communicators are being blocked by some unknown effect.
To their surprise, a Human male approaches and greets them. He identifies himself as Cochrane, saying that he too was marooned on the planet, so long ago that he doesn't even know how long it has been, and has been alone there ever since. He explains that some form of energy dampening field exists on the planet, making it impossible to repair the shuttle - there is nothing wrong with it, it merely cannot operate within the field. He shows the four to his nearby home, a small but comfortable dwelling.
Kirk is suspicious of Cochrane and questions him. Eventually the man admits to being Zefram Cochrane, a historical figure known for being the inventor of warp drive. He explains that when he was 87 he decided to fly into space to die alone. His ship was disabled, but Cochrane was saved by the energy field - it is not a simple mindless phenomena but a life form, which he calls "The Companion". The Companion has used its powers to rejuvenate Cochrane to his current youthful appearance. Despite having the Companion for company, Cochrane says that he has been increasingly lonely on the planet and suspects that the energy being brought Kirk and the others here to provide him with Human company.
Hedford's condition begins to worsen, and McCoy states that she will likely die soon unless she is treated. Spock continues his attempts to get the shuttle working, but when the Companion appears he attempts to communicate with it and is given an electrical shock. The Companion attacks the shuttle, destroying the electrical systems and rendering any further repair efforts useless. Despite this setback, Spick suggests that the attack shows that the Companion is electrical in nature, and this may provide a way to attack it. He creates a device which will short-circuit the Companion and Cochrane calls it to him so that they can make their assault.
Unfortunately the attack fails and the Companion is undamaged. Kirk decides to try and modify the universal translator in an attempt to communicate with the creature. The attempt succeeds, and the Companion explains that it is female in nature and is keeping Cochrane on the planet because she is in love with him. Cochrane is repelled by the idea and storms off. Hedford, who overheard the exchange, states sadly that whilst she has had a successful career she has never been loved, or loved anybody else.
Kirk tries to convince the Companion that she and Cochrane are too different to be in love with one another, but the Companion has a plan; she merges her mind with Hedford, curing the Commissioner of her disease whilst taking Human form. The merge is irreversible - if the Companion leaves, Hedford will die. She repairs the shuttle to allow the Enterprise officers to leave, and Cochrane decides that he can love her in this new form and will remain behind. It appears that in her new form the Companion cannot keep him young, and so the two will have the chance to grow old together and die.
The officers leave, and head back to the Enterprise. They agree between themselves that they will not reveal Cochrane's real fate, but rather let history continue to remember him as before.
I never much liked this episode, and on re-watching it I think I finally pegged why. The story is meant to be a romantic one, all about how love can conquer all obstacles and bring too people together. Okay, fair enough. But... well, look at this objectively and really think about the sequence of events.
An elderly man is travelling through space. A woman sees him passing, and decides that she wants him. So she abducts him. She strands him in a place where she is literally the only contact he has. And then she keeps him prisoner there, essentially indefinitely. She keeps him dependent on her for almost everything - food, water, basic survival. Ultimately she reveals her true intention to seduce the man, and he rejects her. She's told that he cannot love her, and it is pointed out to her that her treatment of him has been inhumane. So, since there happens to be a sick woman nearby, she euthanises her, climbs into her skin, and again demands that the man love her.
I'm sorry, but this is not romantic! This is a fricken horror story! The Companion has been horribly abusive to one man, has committed murder on one woman... and the outcome of this? The man says he is in love with her after all and stays with her! I can only take that as stockholm syndrome - that Cochrane has been so subjugated for so long that he really isn't in any position to make rational or even valid emotional decisions. The moral of the story seems to be "love conquers all... so if somebody doesn't return your love then do anything you have to, right up to murder, to
them love you, dammit!"
Okay, I'm being a little over the top there. But you see the basic problem? The Companion behaves abominably all the way through, right up to the moment that it "merges" with Hedford. And that merge is just plonked in there... yes, we see Hedford express regret over not ever having had love in her life, and yes, we know that Hedford will soon die without treatment. One might suppose that Hedford would agree to the merger on that basis, knowing that her consciousness will remain in some form, and that she will get the love she craves in some form. But that is supposition; from all we see the merger might wipe Hedford's mind completely. And even then, we might suppose that Hedford would agree to that, sacrificing her last hours of life and donating her body so that the Companion might have a chance at love. And either of those might be seen as a romantic gesture, Nancy being willing to do anything for a chance to experience the love she never has, or being willing to sacrifice anything so that somebody else could experience the love she never has.
But all that
just supposition, because the episode never explores any of it. The Companion simply goes "oh, he can't love me because I'm not Human? Okay then..." and jumps straight into the nearest available body. No asking, no discussion, nothing. It treats Hedford like a toy that is there to be used and abused in service of what it wants, just as it has always done with Cochrane, and nobody seems to care very much at all. It's a truly awful bit of story resolution, and it greatly harms an episode that was already struggling. we get nothing to show us that this is something Hedford chose to allow. And there's no moment of realisation, no sense that it ever learns that what it did is wrong. And worse, nobody else involved seems to think it either. Can you really imagine Captain Kirk standing up for that without so much as a word of disapproval? It's a mortal blow to the episode.
Special Edition
The remastered version has the usual improved exteriors of the Enterprise and of the planet. In addition we get some nice shots of the shuttle in flight. One of the surface shots has also replaced some background rocks with a night time sky.
© Graham & Ian Kennedy
Page views : 44,323
Last updated : 27 Jul 2022


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A Hot Dog Makes Her Crazy
February 11, 2010
Quick rundown on the wave of great New York City-based TV shows from the early to mid-sixties: East Side / West Side, Naked City, The Defenders, The Nurses, The Patty Duke Show, Coronet Blue, N.Y.P.D. . . . .
Wait a minute: The Patty Duke Show?
Yes. For its first two seasons, this rather innocuous Hollywood-style sitcom was actually filmed in New York. That's a fact that few television histories have dwelled upon. Indeed, while I had guessed that The Patty Duke Show was lensed in New York based on some of its guest stars, I wasn't sure my theory was accurate until the first season appeared on DVD last year.
This aspect of geography might seem trivial. But since I am, admittedly, not a great enthusiast when it comes to mainstream sitcoms, it was the element of The Patty Duke Show about which I was most curious when I took my first look at it.
There weren't too many comedy series shot in New York after the live era. The important ones that come to mind are Nat Hiken's The Phil Silvers Show and Car 54, Where Are You?, both of which have a funky, nonconformist vibe. They're full of hustlers and oddballs, and in a sense they're humorous counterpart to some of the dramas mentioned above, especially Naked City.
But The Patty Duke Show was something of a Trojan horse. Despite its New York pedigree, this family sitcom sought the same tone as the Hollywood-based domestic comedies that preceded it: Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show. The parents were competent, the kids affable, the real world a safe distance away. Apart from the presence of one foreign relation (more on her later), The Patty Duke Show focused on the same traditional nuclear unit that comprised most of the families in family comedies: father, mother, and two kids.
Consciously or unconsciously, The Patty Duke Show sought to minimize its Brooklyn roots, even as it revealed a Manhattan skyline in the background any time someone in the Lane household opened the front door. Whether due to budgetary limitations or ideology, The Patty Duke Show scrupulously avoided images of the city itself. In the eighteen episodes I screened, the show's characters stepped outdoors only once, in a brief scene in "How to Be Popular."
Though they lived in urban setting, the problems of the Lane family were essentially suburban. And although The Patty Duke Show debuted during the twilight of Camelot (in September 1963), most of the early plotlines could have been lifted from any domestic comedy of the fifties. Dopey dad thinks the fishing license Patty obtains for him is actually her own marriage certificate ("The Elopement"). Little brother Ross goes reluctantly on a first date ("The Birds and the Bees Bit"). Eccentric Aunt Pauline comes for a visit. And so on.
It's no surprise, then, that the creators of The Patty Duke Show were veterans of classic Hollywood comedy. William Asher, the original producer and director, had been the primary director of I Love Lucy. Sidney Sheldon was a screenwriter of MGM musicals, slumming in television for a decade before he found his way into a third career – one which would earn him billions – as an author of trashy novels. Both men worked on The Patty Duke Show immediately prior to producing the two iconic fantasy sitcoms of the sixties: Asher's Bewitched (1964-1972) and Sheldon's I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970).
The one element of The Patty Duke Show that distinguishes it from its domestic predecessors is one that, though merely implausible, anticipates the outright supernatural element of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Sheldon and Asher cast Duke not only as a typical American teenager, Patty Lane, but also as her identical cousin from Scotland, Cathy Lane. (It's worth remembering that Elizabeth Montgomery and Barbara Eden, the stars of Bewitched and Jeannie, both played recurring dual roles on their shows.)
The Patty Duke Show never tried to explain the biological unlikelihood of identical cousins, although the title song's irreverent lyrics did an adequate job of encouraging the audience to accept rather than question the premise. I wonder if Sheldon made the Lane girls cousins rather than twins just to put a little distance between The Patty Duke Show and The Parent Trap, the popular 1961 Disney film from which its premise seems to have been lifted.
Like many successful TV series, The Patty Duke Show underwent a great deal of turmoil before finding the right mix of on- and off-camera talent towards the middle of its first season. The series' pilot was re-shot, with William Schallert replacing Mark Miller in the role of Patty Lane's father, and most of the original footage was recycled into an "origins" story that became the final episode of the first season, "The Cousins." The most obvious alteration in the reshoots was Duke's hairdo, which was changed from a frumpy bob (similar to Hayley Mills's in The Parent Trap) in the pilot to the lighter, longer wig she wore for the rest of the series. The Patty Duke Show was produced by United Artists, a "mini-major" film studio which never produced much television. Its other big show of 1963 was East Side / West Side, which presented UA with the same problem: a pilot that varied so greatly from the rest of the series that it couldn't be dropped seamlessly amid the subsequent episodes. East Side / West Side was such a ratings loser that UA finally aired the pilot without explanation. The Patty Duke Show, at least, merited enough funding to produce "The Cousins," but in the meantime UA managed to thoroughly confuse viewers by mixing footage of Duke wearing both hairdos into the first season's opening title sequence. It was an indifference toward continuity that wouldn't be tolerated by today's audiences.
The Patty Duke Show churned through three producers in its first year. William Asher left around the time the show debuted on ABC; in his excellent memoir When the Shooting Stops … The Cutting Begins, supervising editor Ralph Rosenblum wrote that Asher was fired and his contract bought out due to his continual indecisiveness. Part of Asher's payoff may have been a co-creator credit; until midway through the first season, Sheldon alone was listed as The Patty Duke Show's creator. Replacing Asher were producer Robert Costello (later of Dark Shadows) and director Stanley Prager (who eventually took over the producing job as well). Prager was a blacklisted actor and Broadway director who remains surprisingly little-remembered today, perhaps because he died young in 1972.
Costello and Prager, longtime New York-based producers, may have gotten on better than the outsider Asher did with a distinguished crew that included: Rosenblum (later famous as Woody Allen's editor during the seventies); line producer Stanley Neufeld and art director Robert Gundlach, recent veterans of Naked City who were probably very happy to come in out of the cold for the studio-bound Patty Duke Show; and composer Sid Ramin, who must have had the world's best agent. Ramin receives not only an unprecedented credit in the opening titles, but also a second solo title card in the end credits. He is forgotten today, but had, at the time of The Patty Duke Show, just won both an Oscar and a Grammy for orchestrating Leonard Bernstein's score for West Side Story.
One of the many New York stage actors who appeared on The Patty Duke Show was a teenaged John Spencer (in "How to Be Popular"), thirty-five years before he played Leo McGarry on The West Wing.
So far I've focused on the minutiae The Patty Duke Show's production history without saying much about its content. Regarding the latter, I'm relieved to be able report that the series will prove at least tolerable to sitcom-phobes like myself, and probably delightful to everyone else. The show excels for one reason alone (or maybe two, depending on how you count): Patty Duke. My memory of her work in the few other productions in which I had seen Duke – The Miracle Worker, the treacly "Mrs. McBroom and the Cloud Watcher" episode of Ben Casey, the horrid high-school comedy Billie, Night Gallery's "The Diary," and of course Valley of the Dolls – was that she tended to come across as shrill and overbearing. Now I suspect my impressions had more to do with weaknesses in the material than with Duke's talent.
Here, Duke is never less than likeable, and often funnier than the bland material. In "The Birds and the Bees Bit," obnoxious Ross says that he's lost one of his marbles; Patty's comeback ("Whaaaaaat an opening!") is so obvious it's barely a joke, but Duke cracked me up with her delivery. When the show shifts occasionally into light drama – as in "The Birds and the Bees Bit" when Patty recalls her own childhood awkwardness, or "The Drop Out," a turgid stay-in-school treatise with an odd emphasis on the economic disparity between Patty's family and her boyfriend's – Duke reminds us of her Helen Keller bona fides.
The Patty Duke Show reveals not only Duke's versatility, but also a technical proficiency in her work that is as startling as Meryl Streep's. I suspect Sheldon was drawn to The Parent Trap's dual-role gimmick because he understood that Duke would be wasted playing a standard-issue teenaged girl. Cathy's Scottish accent would have been enough to cue the audience as to who was who, but Duke developed an extensive catalog of mannerisms and facial expressions to distinguish between the brainy, reserved Cathy and the conformist chatterbox Patty. Cathy's crinkle-eyed giggle and Patty's open-mouthed exuberance (as captured in the first season opening titles) were trademarks of each character:
It would be cringeworthy to suggest that Duke's later diagnosis with bipolar disorder had something to do with her skill at switching between two opposite personalities within the same project, except that Duke makes that very point in a new interview that appears on the DVD. (Also intriguing is the fact that Sidney Sheldon, who created the Lane cousins while Duke lived with his family for a few weeks, suffered from bipolar disorder as well.)
Contrary to my expectations, The Patty Duke Show does not overuse the Parent Trap-derived device of identity-switching between the identical girls. Fewer than a third of the episodes have Patty and Cathy changing places to fool someone, and in most of those the swap is incidental rather than central to the plot. As someone who got tired of Durwood or Major Nelson falling for this kind of switcheroo far too often, I'd like to give Sidney Sheldon credit for anticipating his audience and underusing the obvious gimmick inherent in The Patty Duke Show's premise. But what actually happened, I suspect, is that Sheldon became captivated by Patty Lane's freewheeling enthusiasms and intricate, mile-a-minute slang, to the extent that Cathy Lane became a supporting character in her own show. Even though her exotic background might have been expected to launch more than her share of storylines, Cathy, like the other members of the Lane family, developed into a straight man (straight person?) for Patty's antics.
It's fascinating to watch Duke come alive as Patty Lane in a way that she does not as Cathy. Patty is assertive and unflappable; though she has a firm grasp of the status quo and little desire to challenge it, she also does not deny herself any pleasure or goal that it occurs to her to seek out. In that way, Patty may be placed in the company of more obvious pre-feminist women of early sixties television, like Laura Petrie of The Dick Van Dyke Show or Liz Thorpe of The Nurses. She also reminds me, even though she's quite unlike either character, of Allison Mackenzie and Betty Anderson of Peyton Place, which would debut on ABC a year after The Patty Duke Show. The ethereal Allison and the grasping Betty were teenagers defined by their trajectory out of youth (and their small town home) and into adulthood (and the city). It's equally possible to view the slightly younger Patty Lane as a prototypical adult rather than an average teen. This quality comes through mainly in Duke's boundless confidence, which the show met with storylines that had Patty Lane engaging in atypically mature endeavors – pursuing a sexually experienced older man ("The French Teacher") or adopting a Korean child ("Patty, the Foster Mother").
Although the episodes I've seen maintain Patty's good reputation, there is just a hint of a sexual subtext to her precocity. The show saddles Patty with the dopiest boyfriend in the history of television: Richard Harrison (the funny Eddie Applegate), an easygoing underachiever to whom Patty seems attracted mainly because he obeys orders willingly. If Patty was assertive with Richard in all other things, might she not have dragged him behind the bleachers and urged him toward or second or third base? Patty Lane, in contrast to her cousin, strikes me as the kind of teenager whose natural curiosity and impatience would extend to the functions of physical intimacy; my mother, who was about Patty's age in 1963, might have called her "fast."
It would feel creepy to pick up on a sexual component in the performance of a sixteen year-old actress, if not for the facts we now know about Patty Duke's offscreen life: that she was sexually abused before or during the production of the series by her guardian and manager, John Ross (who also scored an associate producer credit on The Patty Duke Show); and that Duke married Harry Falk, Jr., a thirtysomething assistant director who worked on her show, a year before it went off the air in 1966. So sexual awareness was indeed an component in the actress's own teenaged development, even as familial warmth was not; in her interview for the DVD, Duke touchingly points out that she enjoyed making the show so that she could bask in the illusion of a standard-issue family that Sheldon had created for her.
That brings us around to my original entry point into The Patty Duke Show, the seemingly anomalous decision to shoot the series in New York City. I had guessed that perhaps Duke has some theater commitment or family roots that led United Artists to bring the show to her, rather than Duke to Los Angeles. It turns out that the motive was more sinister. As William Schallert reveals in his interview for the DVD, New York was chosen solely because it allowed the producers to circumvent California's stricter child labor laws. Duke would have been restricted to a five-hour workday in Los Angeles – difficult for any teen with a regular part in a TV series, but impossible for one cast in a dual starring role. In New York, she could work a full twelve-hour day. Paul O'Keefe, who played Ross Lane, had an even more herculean workload; he shot his scenes while appearing in the title role in Oliver!, eight times a week, during part of its 1963-1964 Broadway run. Neither of them spent much, if any, time with an on-set teacher. The Patty Duke Show was a far distance from the suburbs, all right.
Obituary: Philip Saltzman (1928-2009)
August 20, 2009
Prolific television writer and producer Philip Saltzman died on August 14 at the age of 80. Saltzman, who had been hospitalized at the Motion Picture Home, suffered from an advanced form of dementia.
Saltzman began writing for television in the late fifties, on half-hour cheapies for Ziv (Mackenzie's Raiders, Lock Up) and then for slightly more distinguished westerns like Wanted Dead or Alive and The Rifleman. Soon Saltzman joined the burgeoning ranks of young writers pumping life into the later seasons of Warners' cookie-cutter detective shows, Hawaiian Eye and Surfside 6. "Four-Cornered Triangle," a noirish story of obsessive love that is Saltzman's best Eye, remains a perfect example of how to base a formulaic show around character rather than action or genre cliches.
One of television's top freelancers during the sixties, Saltzman composed teleplays for action and dramatic series like Richard Diamond Private Detective, Five Fingers, The Third Man, The Detectives, Stoney Burke, Dr. Kildare, Run For Your Life, and The Wild Wild West.
"The Voice of Gina Milan," a Run For Your Life two-hander, paired adventurer Paul Bryan (Ben Gazzara) with an Italian girl of mystery (Susan Strasberg) who turns out to be an brilliant opera singer in momentary flight from her destiny. The steam runs out of this romance once we find out Gina Milan's identity and the nature of her problem; but Saltzman's story (completed by the talented John W. Bloch) remains admirably claustrophobic, and his lovers have a mischievous, carefree byplay suggestive of the lush-life atmosphere that Run For Your Life always struggled to evoke.
"The Voice of Gina Milan" has a killer ending, and a sucker-punch of a third-act twist also distinguishes my favorite Saltzman script, "To Catch the Kaiser." This Stoney Burke entry places the titular rodeo hero in the clutches of Eileen Fowler (Diana Hyland), a beautiful trick rider who hires Stoney (Jack Lord) to corral the majestic horse that crippled her. "Kaiser" is one of those magic hours in which every element comes together: Tom Gries' forceful closeups, the editing of the exciting horse-and-jeep chase, Hyland's typically quicksilver performance, and Dominic Frontiere's proto-Outer Limits scoring, which teases out the baroque emotions in Saltzman's teleplay.
Without ever dropping an obvious clue, Saltzman gradually aligns the viewer with Stoney's uneasy feeling that Eileen and her father (John Anderson, his glum, gravelly drawl vital to the brooding pall that hangs over everything) are withholding something. The truth that Saltzman finally reveals is a cruel one, but he follows it (too fast, maybe, but fifty minutes is a tight noose) with a welcome, bittersweet note of catharsis.
Saltzman also wrote regularly for producer Quinn Martin's 12 O'Clock High and The Fugitive during the sixties. His Fugitives were always solid, if not among the very best episodes; the highlight was perhaps "Trial by Fire," one of the handful of segments that brought Dr. Kimble back to his hometown of Stafford, Indiana, this time to interrogate an alleged witness (Charles Aidman) to the one-armed man's crime. Saltzman did a year as an associate producer on 12 O'Clock High, then two as the producer of Fox's half-hour cop series Felony Squad.
In 1969, Saltzman began a a decade-long, full-time association with Quinn Martin Productions by taking the helm of its most dubious property, the long-running The FBI. Saltzman ably replaced the producer of The FBI's first four seasons, the gifted writer Charles Larson, and continued Larson's strategy of ignoring the cardboard cops (denied any complexity at Mr. Hoover's insistence) as much as possible in favor of the colorful and often sympathetic criminals.
After his own four-year stint with The FBI, Saltzman moved over to QM's Barnaby Jones. Saltzman always managed to sound authentically enthusiastic about this geriatric private eye show, which was lambasted by critics and had the misfortune to be rumored as Richard Nixon's favorite program. Gamely, Saltzman called it the "Playhouse 90 of the Mississippi," referring to Barnaby's popularity in the heartland.
Saltzman ran Barnaby Jones for seven of its eight seasons, during and after which he also wrote or produced a number of other failed pilots, made-for-TV movies, and short-lived shows for Martin. An expert, by then, on the possibilities of crime-fighting by senior citizens, Saltzman wrapped his career by producing several of the revived Perry Mason and Columbo television movies in the late eighties.
I know little about Saltzman's background, although one source states that he was born in Mexico; if that's accurate, he may have been a child of Jews who fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe. Saltzman's widow is Caroline Veiller, daughter of the screenwriter Anthony Veiller (The Killers, Moulin Rouge, The Night of the Iguana).
I never met Saltzman myself, but I am relieved that another TV historian, Jonathan Etter, interviewed Saltzman at length for both his 2003 biography of Quinn Martin and a subsequent Filmfax piece.


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Classic Shaker Small BuffetBy Lyndon Furniture
Our natural Classic Shaker Buffet has long, slender tapered legs. The satiny feel of the finish and the wavy, natural grain of the wood are timeless and truly beautiful. Each sideboard is handcrafted in Vermont using sustainably harvested woods.
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ZAKARIYYA PARK HIGH SCHOOL is public school in Zakariyya Park, Johannesburg.
The school starts with Grade 8 to Grade 12. The subjects taught in school are:
ZAKARIYYA PARK HIGH School
Tumeric Dr
Zakariyya Park
Tel: 011 859 1903
Teacher's Name School Subjects Grades Title Email
[show-team category='ZAKARIYYA-PARK-HIGH-high-school' relation='OR' layout='table' style='img-square,img-white-border,text-left' display='name,photo,groups,taxonomy,ctaxonomy,position,email,location']
Grade 12 Students
Grade 11 Students
Grade 10 Students
Grade 9 Students
Grade 8 Students
Our school would like to provide a safe environment that enables our learner to learn and reach their potential. There are projects we want to undertake that assist our school in achieving our goals. Some of the project we want to undertake are:
- Improve safety and security by installing intrusion detector and cameras.
- Improve safety and security by hiring security person(s).
- Re-equip our computer lab
- Reading Material
- Library
- Fix our perimeter fence
- Paint the school
- Fix our sports ground
- Soccer
- Cricket
- Netball
- Tennis
- Rugby
- AtHendricketics
- Chess
Check on the list below and see which of your school mates you can still remember, if you do not see your name please register here, if you also dont see your ex school mates dont worry, just get them to register.
Class of 2017
Class of 2016
Class of 2015
Class of 2014
Class of 2013
Class of 2012
Class of 2011
Class of 2010
Class of 2009
Class of 2008
Class of 2007
Class of 2006
Class of 2005
Class of 2004
Class of 2003
Class of 2002
Class of 2001
Class of 2000
Class of 1999
Class of 1998
Class of 1997
Class of 1996
Class of 1995


text:
Dave Ramsey: Be tight-fisted until the crisis is over
Dear Dave,
Recently, my husband had to quit his job due to an old back injury. We have $25,000 in debt, but I'll be receiving a $38,000 inheritance in a couple of weeks. Should we use the money to pay off our debt, or hold on to it in case he needs surgery?
Dear Kristen,
Now is the time to keep the cash piled high. You're in the middle of an emergency, and that means you push the pause button on your Total Money Makeover and stop paying extra on debt. Surgery is a possibility at this point, plus you may need some of that money to live on until his job situation improves.
Then, the moment he returns to work and things are stabilized, you jump back into getting control of your finances. Use whatever is left of the $38,000 to pay off debt that very day. But right now you don't need to worry about becoming debt-free, only to turn around and be in a mess in the event he has trouble finding another job.
Let me give you a warning too. Thirty-eight thousand dollars is a great gift. If someone handed me a check for that amount, I'd cash it in a heartbeat. But it's not $380,000 or $3.8 million. It's easy to develop a false sense of security if you've never received a check of that size. This kind of money is enough to keep the wolf away from the door for a while, but it's nothing to retire on.
This little nest egg is a real blessing, Kristen. Just make sure you handle it wisely, and take into account all of the possibilities over the next couple of months. In a best-case scenario your husband won't need surgery, he'll find a job pretty soon, and you guys won't have to dig in to the inheritance money. Hang on to as much as possible, though. This sounds like a time of personal and professional transition for you both, and having that kind of extra cash around could be a lifesaver!
Should we ever buy a house?
Dear Dave,
My husband and I are on Baby Step 2 of your plan. We move every two or three years due to our jobs, so would it ever make sense in our situation to buy a house?
Dear Janelle,
In most cases like this it doesn't make sense to buy a house, especially if the real estate market in your area is lethargic. Some markets have bounced back and are doing very well, while some are worse than slow. It all depends on where you're moving.
Here's the big question: Can you get the place sold quickly the next time you have to move? Another thing to consider is whether or not you can sell it for more than it cost when the time comes. If not, you'll be writing a check for home ownership, and that's not a good plan.
As a general rule, a two- to three-year window is not enough time to own a home. There are rare exceptions to this rule, places where you have a hot, escalating price market. But if you're not careful you'll end up leaving behind a rental property and playing landlord, whether you want to or not!
Dave Ramsey is America's most trusted voice on money and business. He's authored four New York Times best-selling books: "Financial Peace," "More Than Enough," "The Total Money Makeover" and "EntreLeadership." The "Dave Ramsey Show" is heard by more than 5 million listeners each week on more than 500 radio stations. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the Web at daveramsey.com.


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Emerging Leaders 2008: Group I
Sponsored by CALM (ALA/SAA/AAM Combined Committee on Archives, Libraries and Museums)
Extend impact in speaking on broad issues of access, preservation, and advocacy for the value of archives of all types.
The ALA/SAA/AAM Combined Committee on Archives, Libraries and Museums (CALM) is seeking to extend its impact in speaking on broad issues of access, preservation, and advocacy for the value of archives of all types. The Committee would welcome assistance from a team in enabling access to key documents for the committee and supporting the committee as it sets plans for programming at the meetings of the 3 organizations in support of this goal.
Expected Outcomes
1) Population of the existing wiki with links to key documents, development of committee blog, or other means for inter-meeting communication
2) Background research on the issues confronting the committee
Group Members
Michelle Baildon, MIT
Heather Cole, Harvard University
David Conners, Haverford College
Marcia Dority Baker, University of Nebraska
Mary Hanlin, Tidewater Community College
For ALA:
Mary W. Ghikas, Senior Associate Executive Director
Karen Muller, Librarian and Knowledge Management Specialist
For SAA:
Nancy Perkin Beaumont, SAA Executive Director
For AAM:
Kim Igoe, Executive Vice President
Elizabeth Merritt, Director, Museum Advancement & Excellence
Christian Dupont(CALM ALA co-chair, RBMS chair), University of Virginia
Individual Roles
Michelle: Contact person for CALM SAA co-chair, Deborrah Richardson.
Heather: Contact person for CALM ALA co-chair and Emerging Leaders group mentor, Christian Dupont.
David: Update the Emerging Leaders Wiki with a progress report each month. Liaison to the CALM listserv.
Marcia: Contact person for CALM AAM co-chair, Holly Witchey.
Mary: Monitor work of the team and write up a report about the groups progress for the April AAM meeting.
Group Roles
Michelle, Heather, and Mary: Research the three organizations to find organizational information relevant to CALM (mission statements, organization structure & crosswalk, codes of ethics, etc).
David and Marcia: Create the digital presentation to presented at ALA Annual (the "poster session").
All: Populate and Update the CALM wiki.
Subject Areas for the CALM wiki
Information about the Organizations and their relationship to each other. [MICHELLE (SAA), MARCIA (AAM), HEATHER (ALA)]
Policy Issues such as copyright, national budget of IMLS, etc. [MARY]
Programming for CALM (upcoming events, deadlines for proposals, etc.) [DAVID]
Projects related to CALM (ALA/SAA Joint Statement on Access, ALA OITP Task Force on Digitization Policy, etc.) [DAVID]
Information about CALM (CALM Members, history, charge, meeting minutes/handouts) [DAVID]
Meeting Times
Friday January 11, 2008 8:30 am - 5:00 pm: Emerging Leaders Workshop. Location: Pennsylvania Convention Center, Room 113 A/B
Saturday January 12, 2008 9:00 pm - 10:30 pm: Group Dessert. Location: Naked Chocolate Cafe, 1317 Walnut Street
Sunday January 13, 2008 10:30 am - 12:00 pm: CALM Meeting. Location: Philadelphia Marriott, rooms 414-415
1) For background information on the types of issues CALM will be working with, please see Digital Readiness and Cultural Heritage Institutions
2) RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage Vol. 8, no. 1, Spring 2007. The issue is devoted to "Libraries, Archives, and Museums: Intersecting Missions, Converging Futures?"
3) Notes from ALA Midwinter Meeting
Monthly Updates
Group I's January Update
Group I's February Update
Group I's March Update
Group I's May update
Group I's June update
Group I Reports
[Dority Baker Report http://wikis.ala.org/emergingleaders/images/8/8b/DorityBaker-ELreport.pdf]


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The Right wing got off to a beautiful start in the culture wars 64 years ago today, when a ballsy congressman from California, Richard Nixon, smelled a rat in Alger Hiss's denial of Whittaker Chambers accusation of being a communist. The Left has spent much political capital in trying to defend the traitor ever since. The August 17th 1948 meeting set in motion a series of Cold War battles that ended with a Right wing TKO so devastating, that Chuck Wepner is said to have looked away.
The final blow was the release of Soviet intelligence files in the late 1990's which specifically implicated Hiss as a spy. Thankfully, Hiss lived long enough to witness his lifelong lie exposed, specifically by those he sought to aid. When I think of the elderly Hiss knowing that others now knew with certainty of his lies and betrayal, I get all gooey inside.
In 1984, President Reagan posthumously awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom and made these remarks:
At a critical moment in our Nation's history, Whittaker Chambers stood alone against the brooding terrors of our age. Consummate intellectual, writer of moving majestic prose, and witness to the truth, he became the focus of a momentous controversy in American history that symbolized our century's epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism, a controversy in which the solitary figure of Whittaker Chambers personified the mystery of human redemption in the face of evil and suffering. As long as humanity speaks of virtue and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire. The words of Arthur Koestler are his epitaph: "The witness is gone; the testimony will stand."
Book: Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars— The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy by G. Edward White
Method: Read library copy
What I got from the book:
- Great recap of the ebbs and flows in public opinion given efforts by Hiss and Fellow Travelers to rehabilitate his reputation.
- How Allen Weinstein fell victim to Left wing attacks, despite widespread acknowledgement that he had written a compelling book about the Hiss-Chambers battle named Perjury.
- Learned of the mob friends Hiss made during his 44 months at Lewisburg federal prison. Chief among them, Frank Costello.


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Signs emerge that US job market may be picking up
WASHINGTON - The job market is sending signs that it may be strengthening.
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits has sunk to its lowest point in six years because few companies are laying anyone off anymore.
A survey of service companies found that they added jobs last month at their fastest pace in six months.
And more small businesses say they plan to hire than at any point since the recession began.
All of which is prompting some economists to forecast a healthier job gain in September than the economy has produced in recent months.
"If you put all that together, it suggests that there has been an improvement in job market conditions," said Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics.
Ashworth predicts that employers will have added 220,000 jobs in September. That would be the biggest gain in nearly seven months and would mark a sharp reversal from the summer. Job growth has averaged just 155,000 a month since April, down from 205,000 in the first four months of the year.
The unemployment rate dropped to 7.3 percent in August from 7.4 percent in July. But the drop mostly occurred because more Americans stopped working or looking for jobs. The government no longer counts people without a job as unemployed once they stop looking for one.
The Federal Reserve is monitoring the jobs data as it considers when to slow its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases. Those purchases are intended to keep interest rates low and speed borrowing, spending and economic growth.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke noted last week that the job market is "still far from what all of us would like to see."
Yet it might already be improving.
Last week, applications for unemployment benefits fell 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 305,000. The number had reached 294,000 two weeks earlier, but that figure was distorted by computer upgrades in California and Nevada that prevented those states from processing all their claims. Those two states have now caught up and are reporting complete data, the government says.
Excluding the distorted figure, last week's 305,000 applications were the fewest since September 2007, three months before the Great Recession began.
Applications generally reflect the pace of layoffs. Layoffs had already fallen in July to the lowest on records dating back to 2000, according to a separate report. Applications have dropped an additional 7 percent since then.
The dwindling number of people seeking unemployment benefits "is signaling further acceleration in payroll gains," Jim O'Sullivan, an economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients.
Separately, the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said this month that service companies stepped up hiring last month. Service companies employ 90 percent of the U.S. workforce and range from the retail and construction industries to health care and financial services.
Manufacturers also added jobs in August, the institute found, though at a slower pace than in July.
In addition, the National Federation of Independent Business has said the percentage of small businesses that plan to add workers rose this month to the highest level since January 2007.
The economy is growing steadily, though sluggishly. It expanded at a 2.5 percent annual pace from April to June, the government has estimated. That is up from a scant 1.1 percent annual rate from January through March. For the first six months of the year, the economy has grown at a rate of just 1.8 percent.
Economists worry that growth is slowing to an annual rate of 2 percent or less in the current July-September quarter. If correct, that would mark the third quarter in the past four that the annual growth rate has fallen to 2 percent or below, an abnormally low level.
About 3.9 million Americans received unemployment benefits in the week that ended Sept. 7, about 23,000 more than in the previous week. That total has fallen 32 percent in the past year.
Some recipients likely found jobs, but many have used up all the unemployment benefits available to them.


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Chambliss done after 2 terms
WASHINGTON - Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced Friday he will not seek a third term next year, saying "this is about frustration" with Washington gridlock that he doesn't see changing in a divided government.
"After much contemplation and reflection, I have decided not to run for re-election to the Senate in 2014," the 69-year-old Chambliss said in a statement.
The lawmaker rejected suggestions he couldn't have survived a likely GOP primary fight with the tea party, insisting he has a proud conservative record and noting he received more votes than any other statewide official in Georgia history in 2008.
Instead, he cited his dismay with both Democratic President Barack Obama and the lack of meaningful legislation in Congress, especially in addressing the nation's economic woes.
"The debt-ceiling debacle of 2011 and the recent fiscal-cliff vote showed Congress at its worst, and sadly, I don't see the legislative gridlock and partisan posturing improving anytime soon," Chambliss said. "For our nation to be strong, for our country to prosper, we cannot continue to play politics with the American economy."
His strong words of disappointment echoed those of former Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, who also complained about the partisan divide and Washington dysfunction in announcing she wouldn't run again last year.
Chambliss, 69, has been a GOP loyalist for much of his House and Senate career, but he earned the wrath of some in his party for participating in a bipartisan Senate "Gang of Six" intent on finding a way to reduce the deficit. The group advocated a mix of tax increases, anathema to many in the GOP, and spending cuts. But the group failed to reach agreement and produce a bargain.
"Leadership is about taking risks when you don't have to. That's why I respect Saxby Chambliss for his willingness to partner with me and other members of what became known as the Gang of Six as we worked for bipartisan solutions on debt and deficits," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.
Although no major Republican candidate had announced a challenge to Chambliss, he was facing the distinct possibility of a tough race. His decision was certain to set off a GOP scramble for the seat.
Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., an 11-term House veteran, said he was considering seeking the seat. Kingston, 57, said his knowledge of defense and agriculture, important issues in Georgia, would help him in a race.
"Regardless of what happens, it's going to be a 10-person race," Kingston said in a telephone interview from Israel, where he was traveling with other lawmakers. "And I think you'll probably have a self-funder in there, and you can have a mad scramble."
Among other potential Republican candidates is four-term Rep. Tom Price from a district north of Atlanta.
Other possible Republican candidates are two other House members - Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey, both physicians. Broun gained national attention last year when he described evolution as a lie "from the pit of Hell." Gingrey claimed the spotlight earlier this month when he defended controversial statements about abortion made last year by failed Missouri Senate hopeful Todd Akin.
Chambliss was first elected to the House in the 1994 Republican wave. He moved up to the Senate after a bruising 2002 campaign in which he defeated Democratic incumbent Max Cleland, a triple amputee from his Vietnam war service.
He was criticized for a slashing campaign against Cleland that included an ad, featuring terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, criticizing the Democrat - a decorated Vietnam War veteran - for his record on defense and homeland security issues. Even some of Chambliss' fellow Republicans said it went too far.
Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Democrats will try to win back the seat.
"Georgia will now offer Democrats one of our best pick-up opportunities of the cycle," Cecil said. "There are already several reports of the potential for a divisive primary that will push Republicans to the extreme right. Regardless, there's no question that the demographics of the state have changed, and Democrats are gaining strength. This will be a top priority."
Democrats hold a 55-45 advantage in the Senate but will be defending more seats next year - 20 to the GOP's 13. Democrats will be scrambling to hold onto the seat in GOP-leaning West Virginia, where five-term Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller recently announced he would not seek re-election. Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito is running for the Senate seat.
Democratic incumbents also face tough re-election races in Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina and Alaska - all states that went Republican in the last presidential election.
An open seat in Georgia, which has trended Republican, presents a legitimate opportunity for Democrats, especially if the GOP faces a divisive primary. Potential Democratic candidates are conservative Rep. John Barrow, who has survived redistricting in his House races, and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.
Pizza mogul Herman Cain, the failed presidential candidate in 2012 and a tea party favorite, said he would not seek the seat but rather focus on his radio show.
Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Alan Fram in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.


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I am en route to London, where needless to say we are unable to attend the Nationals six-game homestand that starts tonight vs. the Marlins and Diamondbacks. As we did for one homestand last summer, rather than recruit somebody to update the blog, we're going to ask the loyal Let Teddy Win readers to take over!
Going to Nationals Park? Please leave a comment on this blog post with your reports describing what happened in the presidents race (be sure to mention the date).
Got photos? Add them to the Flickr presidents race group, or on our Facebook page. When we return we'll update the Presidents Race Standings page with all the results!
Photo by flickr member afagen


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Let's play "WHO SCREWED UP MORE?"
Was it Torii Hunter, whose overconfident lunge at a Kotsay blooper turned a routine RBI single or double into a signature 2-run inside-the-park HR that effectively cost the Twins the game -- and put them in a seemingly insurmountable 0-2 hole in the LDS after two games in Minnesota?
Or was it JD Drew, whose unprecedented base-running blunder turned into the first-ever moment in baseball playoffs history that two players were tagged out at home on the same play?
Though Hunter's miscue directly cost the Twins the game and the Dodgers didn't throw away the entire game on "J.D.'s Boner," there's no question that Drew's double-D'oh was the bigger blunder.
Hindsight will rule here: If the Dodgers go on to lose the series (as they went on to lose Game 1 last night), Drew's dud will probably be attributed as the triggering event. (If they win, it'll be forgotten.)
The upshot is that both blunders have the promise of being devastating to their team's psyches -- in a 5-game series, they could be all the difference.
Tigers at Yankees, Game 2 (Make-Up): I believe that the last time the Yankees had to deal with playoff games on consecutive days to account for a rain delay, they delivered the biggest choke in sports history.
But these 2006 Tigers ain't those 2004 Red Sox (and these 2006 Yankees are a lot better than those 2004 Yankees).
(Randy Johnson is reportedly ready to pitch Game 3 tomorrow in
Dodgers at Mets, Game 2 (8 p.m.): It looks like El Duque will miss the entire playoffs with a calf injury. (What is it with old Mets pitchers and their calves?)
Cards at Padres, Game 2 (4 p.m.): How would most Cards fans rate their confidence in Jeff Weaver as the starting pitcher?
(Hmm: Probably with the same confidence that Padres fans have in David Wells as THEIR starting pitcher.)
A's up 2-0 on Twins: As I said yesterday, when a freak inside-the-park-HR is the winning margin to let the visiting team take a second straight game on the road before heading back home for two games, you know the series is as good as over. The Twins must have used all their mojo winning that division title.
T.O. vs. Eagles, Cont'd: When's the weigh-in?
The latest forced drama is that McNabb says he sent T.O. a text message last week to support him in his time of, uh, need.
T.O. says he never got the text.
(Actually, McNabb sent him 35 texts and T.O.'s publicist says she was so shaken up when she saw the list on T.O.'s cell-phone that she called 9-1-1, thinking T.O. was trying to text himself to death.)
This is what we're reduced to:
He-said-he-said about text messages. The T.O.-Eagles feud has officially regressed to the junior high level.
Can Koren Robinson apply his 45 days of work-release (to go with 45 days in jail, per his DUI sentencing) toward playing football?
Greg Anderson is out of jail today: And, yet, the "Game of Shadows" guys are clink-bound. Ah, the sweet smell of justice...
Commish Gary Bettman says the NHL is in good shape, and usually this would be the moment for sarcasm, but I actually agree with him:
As soon as the NHL started running itself like a tidy niche sport, it was on the road to recovery. Dropping pretensions of being part of a mythical "Big Four" was the key.
(For the record, there is currently a "Big Three": NFL, MLB and College Football. That's right: I don't consider the NBA part of the "Big" sports anymore either. It is merely the biggest of the niche sports.)
More niche-sport news: MLS will let teams sell ads on the front of jerseys. I've argued for a while, this is an inevitability in both the NBA and MLB.
There's nothing sacred about jerseys – at least nothing that the big dollars from sponsors can't buy. NASCAR fans and European soccer fans (who eclipse MLB or NBA fans for passion) don't seem to mind.
I have yet to hear a good argument -- beyond "what about the tradition!" -- for keeping advertisements off MLB or NBA uniforms. It's simply not worth getting that upset over.
(Ideally, owners would take that jersey-sponsorship revenue and have to earmark it for either reducing the price of tickets or parking OR for growing payroll to make the team better. I'm not holding my breath.)Update: Thanks to reader Garett D. (from Canada!) who reminded that my favorite Euro football team, Barcelona, actually PAID a sponsor to put their logo on their uniforms, which the team previously had refused to ever adorn with an ad. The sponsor? UNICEF. The team pays the sponsor AND the money goes to a good cause? Now THERE's a concept.
After the ill-fated Bob Ferry Era, the inept Wes Unseld Era (and the even more f'ed up Michael Jordan Era), hiring Ernie Grunfeld to run the team's basketball operations was the best decision the Wizards ever made, so giving Grunfeld a contract extension continues to keep the Wiz on the right path. For once. (And I say that as a Wizards fan.)
Finally, a HUGE thanks to all the blog readers who came out for my NYC reading series last night. It was great to meet all of you in person, and I hope you had a great time. It was a really fun event.


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SOCHI, Russia — Smoke and mirrors? Russian state television aired footage Friday of five floating snowflakes turning into the Olympic rings and bursting into pyrotechnics at the Sochi Games opening ceremony. Problem is, that didn't happen.
The opening ceremony at the Winter Games hit a bump when only four of the five rings materialized in a wintry opening scene. The five were supposed to join together and erupt in fireworks. But one snowflake never expanded, and the pyrotechnics never went off.
But everything worked fine for viewers of the Rossiya 1, the Russian host broadcaster.
As the fifth ring got stuck, Rossiya cut away to rehearsal footage. All five rings came together, and the fireworks exploded on cue.
"It didn't show on television, thank God," Jean-Claude Killy, the French ski great who heads the IOC coordination commission for the Sochi Games, told The Associated Press.
Producers confirmed the switch, saying it was important to preserve the imagery of the Olympic symbols.
The unveiling of the rings is always one of the most iconic moments of an opening ceremony, and President Vladimir Putin has been determined to use the ceremony as an introduction of the new Russia to the world.
Konstantin Ernst, executive creative director of the opening ceremony, told reporters at a news conference that he called down to master control to tell them to go the practice footage when he realized what happened.
"This is an open secret," he said, referring to the use of the pre-recorded footage. The show's artistic director George Tsypin said the malfunction was caused by a bad command from a stage manager.
Ernst defended his decision, saying that the most important part was preserving the images and the Olympic tradition: "This is certainly bad, but it does not humiliate us."
NBC was to air the ceremony in the U.S. on tape delay later Friday, and said in a statement: "We will show things as they happened tonight."
Glitches are not uncommon at Olympic opening ceremonies.
There was a minor controversy over trickery involving the fireworks at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, after it was revealed that some of the display featured prerecorded footage.
Fireworks bursting into the shape of gigantic footprints were shown trudging above the Beijing skyline to the National Stadium near the start of the ceremony. Officials confirmed that some of the footage shown to TV viewers around the world and on giant screens inside the stadium featured a computer-generated, three-dimensional image.
In addition, a tiny, pigtailed 9-year-old girl in a red dress who sang "Ode to the Motherland" was lip-synching. The real voice belonged to a 7-year-old girl who was replaced because she was deemed not cute enough by a member of China's Politburo.
At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Luciano Pavarotti's performance was prerecorded. The maestro who conducted the aria, Leone Magiera, said the bitter cold made a live performance impossible.


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Concealed carry ban struck down
CHICAGO — In a major victory for gun rights advocates, a federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down a ban on carrying concealed weapons in Illinois — the only remaining state where carrying concealed weapons is entirely illegal — and gave lawmakers 180 days to write a law that legalizes it.
In overturning a lower court decision, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the ban was unconstitutional and suggested a law legalizing concealed carry is long overdue in a state where gun advocates had vowed to challenge the ban on every front.
"There is no suggestion that some unique characteristic of criminal activity in Illinois justifies the state's taking a different approach from the other 49 states," Judge Richard Posner, who wrote the court's majority opinion. "If the Illinois approach were demonstrably superior, one would expect at least one or two other states to have emulated it."
Gun rights advocates were thrilled by the decision. They have long argued that the prohibition violates the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment and what they see as Americans' right to carry guns for self-defense.
"Christmas came early for law-abiding gun owners," said state Rep. Brandon Phelps, a Democratic lawmaker from southern Illinois whose proposed legislation approving concealed carry narrowly lost in the Legislature last year. "It's a mandate."
Gov. Pat Quinn, who favors strict gun control laws, was reviewing the opinion and did not have immediate comment, according to a spokeswoman. Attorney General Lisa Madigan, whose office is responsible for defending the state's laws in court, will review the ruling before deciding whether to appeal or take other action, said spokeswoman Maura Possley.
"The court gave 180 days before its decision will be returned to the lower court to be implemented," Possley said in a statement. "That time period allows our office to review what legal steps can be taken and enables the legislature to consider whether it wants to take action."
Richard Pearson, the executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said there is no reason why lawmakers cannot pass Phelps' bill during a weeklong legislative session in January.
"Now that the court has ruled … we will work as soon as possible with legislators to craft a concealed carry bill for the state of Illinois," he said.
The court did order its ruling stayed to "allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public," Posner wrote.
Phelps suggested that the court, in its 2-1 ruling, may have encouraged lawmakers to pass a far less restrictive concealed carry law than the one he proposed last year that was rejected.
"I said on the floor, 'A lot of people who voted against this, one of these days you're going to wish you did, because of all the limitations and the safety precautions we put in this bill, because one of these days the court's going to rule and you're not going to like the ruling," he said. "Today's the day."
The appellate panel's majority ruling, which was replete with historical references, argued that Illinois had not made a strong case that a gun ban was vital to public safety. It also was a signal to state lawmakers and gun-ban activists that the time to argue about the Second Amendment has passed.
"We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home," wrote Posner. "The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside."
But the dissenting judge, Ann Claire Williams, raised questions that could come up in a possible appeal or when lawmakers begin to debate and craft a new law addressing the issue.
After saying that "protecting the safety of its citizens is unquestionably a significant state interest," Williams wrote, "when firearms are carried outside the home, the safety of a broader range of citizens is at issue. The risk of being injured or killed now extends to strangers, law enforcement personnel, and other private citizens who happen to be in the area."
Gun rights advocates had been threatening to make Illinois once again the center of the national gun-control debate over the issue. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court made Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban unenforceable, ruling that Americans have the right to have guns in their homes for protection. The city responded by approving alternative methods of restricting who can have guns.
Gun control advocates did not immediately respond to the ruling. But as other states passed concealed carry laws, they had argued that Illinois' ban was important for their stance in the national debate over gun control.
The country needs "one state people can look to and see it's still doing the right thing," Mark Walsh, director of the Illinois Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said last year.
The ruling Monday stems from a lawsuit filed by a former corrections officer, Michael Moore of Champaign, a farmer, Charles Hooks of Percy in southeastern Illinois and the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation.


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WASHINGTON (AP) _ Recalling the shooting rampage that killed 20 first graders as the worst day of his presidency, President Barack Obama on Sunday pledged to put his "full weight'' behind legislation aimed at preventing gun violence.
In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press,'' Obama voiced skepticism about the National Rifle Association's proposal to put armed guards in schools following the Dec. 14 tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Instead, the president vowed to rally the American people around an agenda to limit gun violence, adding that he still supports increased background checks and bans on assault weapons and high capacity bullet magazines. He left no doubt it will be one of his top priorities next year.
"It is not enough for us to say, `This is too hard so we're not going to try,''' Obama said.
"I think there are a vast majority of responsible gun owners out there who recognize that we can't have a situation in which somebody with severe psychological problems is able to get the kind of high capacity weapons that this individual in Newtown obtained and gun down our kids,'' he added. "And, yes, it's going to be hard.''
The president added that he's ready to meet with Republicans and Democrats, anyone with a stake in the issue.
The schoolhouse shootings, coming as families prepared for the holidays, have elevated the issue of gun violence to the forefront of public attention. Six adult staff members were also killed at the elementary school. Shooter Adam Lanza committed suicide, apparently as police closed in. Earlier, he had killed his mother at the home they shared.
The tragedy immediately prompted calls for greater gun controls. But the NRA is strongly resisting those efforts, arguing instead that schools should have armed guards for protection. Some gun enthusiasts have rushed to buy semiautomatic rifles of the type used by Lanza, fearing sales may soon be restricted.
Obama seemed unimpressed by the NRA proposal. "I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools,'' he said. "And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.''
The president said he intends to press the issue with the public.
"The question then becomes whether we are actually shook up enough by what happened here that it does not just become another one of these routine episodes where it gets a lot of attention for a couple of weeks and then it drifts away,'' Obama said. "It certainly won't feel like that to me. This is something that – you know, that was the worst day of my presidency. And it's not something that I want to see repeated.''
Separately, a member of the president's cabinet said Sunday that rural America may be ready to join a national conversation about gun control. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the debate has to start with respect for the Second Amendment right to bear arms and a recognition that hunting is a way of life for millions of Americans.
But Vilsack said Newtown has changed the way people see the issue. "I really believe that this is a different circumstance and a different situation and I think the president believes it as well, that this is going to be sustained convention,'' Vilsack said on CNN.
Vilsack said he thinks it's possible for Americans to come together. "It's potentially a unifying conversation,'' he said. "The problem is that these conversations are always couched in the terms of dividing us. This could be a unifying conversation and Lord knows we need to be unified.''
Besides passing gun violence legislation, Obama also listed deficit reduction and immigration as top priorities for 2013. A big deficit reduction deal with Republicans proved elusive this month and Obama is now hoping Senate Democratic and Republican leaders salvage a scaled back plan that avoids tax increases for virtually all Americans.
In addition, he issued a defense of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has been mentioned as one of the leading candidates to replace Leon Panetta as secretary of defense.
Hagel, who opposed President George W. Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq, has been criticized in conservative circles for not being a strong enough ally of Israel. Also, many liberals and gay activists have banded against him for comments he made in 1998 about an openly gay nominee for an ambassadorship
Obama, who briefly served with Hagel in the Senate, stressed that he had yet to make a decision but called Hagel a "patriot.''
Hagel "served this country with valor in Vietnam,'' the president said. "And (he) is somebody who's currently serving on my intelligence advisory board and doing an outstanding job.''
Obama noted that Hagel had apologized for his 14-year-old remark on gays.


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Training With a Finger Injury
How can I continue to train with a hurt finger?
—Eric Patrick, Austin, TX
Cheer up, a tweaked finger can be a blessing in disguise. An injury is a chance to break ourselves of the same old training routines, which can create plateaus. After rest, your fingers will also respond better when you return to training.
Start by grading your injury from one to three according to severity. One is a minor twinge that you can climb through providing you reduce the intensity and stick to jugs. Two is a notable tweak: You can't climb, but you can do pull-ups on a bar. Three is a severe twang that means no hanging, even from a bar, and hence you will be confined to weights, floor exercises and cross training for a while.
[Also Read Chronic Crimpers: Why Do I Crimp Everything?]
Also consider the type of tweak—if you injured yourself on a crimp, then you may still be able to use slopers or hang on larger edges with an open-handed grip. Conversely, if you hurt yourself on a pocket, then crimping may still be OK.
Level One tweaks should be rested totally for a week while you ice and take anti-inflammatories. You can run and visit the gym to your heart's content during this week, although you should avoid exercises that involve pulling on a bar or hanging. Some floor exercises for core strength, such as the cross, the bridge and dorsal raises, will work great.
The next week, add pull-ups and leg raises on a bar. You can also start to stretch the injury site and massage it gently, creating moderate pressure across the tendon rather than parallel to it.
The third week after injury you can return to climbing, but no bouldering and no routes at your usual grade. The first session should be no more than a warm-up. The following session, drop it down three or four grades and do double laps on each route to develop low-intensity stamina. Be incredibly disciplined with your choice of routes — jugs only, and if you come across a tweaky grip at the climbing gym, don't hesitate to use a better hold instead.
When the strain starts to feel better, you can return to harder and slightly more fingery single routes, but avoid the type of hold that caused the injury. Another tip at this stage is to use the finger holds on a hard gym route with your good hand and the jugs on a parallel easier route with the other. If things are still going well, then you can return to bouldering by the fourth or fifth week, keeping well below your usual grade and going for more mileage. A safer alternative to strength work is to use a system board, in order to control the types of holds, you use.
Those suffering Level Two tweaks should multiply the above rehab times by two (as an approximate guide) and those with severe (Level Three) tweaks should multiply by three. If you have a Level Three injury, look into cardio, weights and circuit training in more detail. I know how frustrating it is to stay away from climbing for long periods, but climbers are notoriously specialized in their fitness. You will climb much better when you return if you use this opportunity to build a decent aerobic base. Many climbers experience elbow and shoulder problems because they have a poor strength base or an imbalance in strength. Get your body fit, strong and balanced, and you may look back on this injury as a useful and productive opportunity to improve your climbing.
Also Read
Systems Wall and Symmetrical Training


text: Obama uses executive order in sweeping takeover of nation's climate change policies 2 novembre 2013 ~ Michel Duchaine Publié par Michel Duchaine Born in 1953,I am the founder of the Defenders of the Earth in October 10 ,2007. We try to proposed an alternative of the New World Order and a new vision of life. We consider that the Humanity must live in harmony with all forms of life and abolish the neoliberalism for preserve the human life and continue the Earthlians adventure. We consider that we are not alone and we will receive an ultimatum in few time. Afficher tous les articles par Michel Duchaine